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Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

cardiff.ac.uk

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Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#51

Post by fdsafdsafds »

defrost wrote: post #39
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #35

Owain added new scientific terms to the Welsh dictionary. These include: “damcaniaeth dwysedd ffwythianolion” meaning “density functional theory” “brasamcan graddiant cyffredinol” which means a “general gradient approximation” “dull gwahaniaeth feidriadd” which translates as “finite difference method” Which sort of disproves the hypothesis that 'Welsh Is a Language for Science'.

Not in the slightest. When Isaac Asimov was doing his doctoral thesis in Chemistry the defacto language for reading and understanding any applied | industrial chemistry work was German. The three Welsh examples above appear to the untrained eye just as long, unweildly, and complex as German expressions in chemistry .. the real test is whether they become easier with familiarity and regular use.

Long and complex-looking terms in the de facto language of a particular area of research are quite different from long and complex-looking novel terms in a highly localised minority language which the speakers of that language would have difficulty parsing.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#52

Post by fdsafdsafds »

free_flintshire wrote: post #40
kome wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, in this case it's preserving a language that is almost dead, because killed by English internal colonialism/centralism so to say, and preserving a language is also a good endeavor.

Regional languages and dialects often decline with the emergence of modern states without a directed centralised effort to kill them.

I have a friend, free_glamorgan. Sounds like you guys should meet up!

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#53

Post by OfSanguineFire »

VK538FY wrote: post #47
joe__f wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone had told me while I was writing up that I should translate my thesis into another language I think my brain would have exploded

Really? Just write it in your native language (Welsh in this case) and have someone translate it. For most languages, not a big problem and the uni surely has the resources to do it. Here, the additional effort is the creation of the Welsh words that don't exist and maintaining the list for a Welsh to English translator.

> For most languages, not a big problem and the uni surely has the resources to do it.

This is extremely uninformed. Not only will universities not translate your dissertation for you, they usually won’t even revise the English if you are a non-native speaker and wrote in that language. You have to pay for the costs of language revision out of your grant funding or even out of your own pocket. And this is not cheap. At standard rates and standard length of a standard PhD thesis, one could expect to pay nearly a thousand euro for mere language revision. The costs of translation of a dissertation from one language into another would run already into the thousands of euro.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#54

Post by lotsofpulp »

chimprich wrote: post #44
kome wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, in this case it's preserving a language that is almost dead, because killed by English internal colonialism/centralism so to say, and preserving a language is also a good endeavor.

Calling a language that is spoken by hundreds of thousands of people "almost dead" is a strange claim. A quick search suggests Welsh is in the top 7% of languages spoken worldwide.

Maybe stagnated is a better word. I know a language where you can talk about everyday things, and so can probably a hundred million other people. But no one can talk about any topic more advanced than an elementary school subject without switching to a bigger language.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#55

Post by naniwaduni »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #53
VK538FY wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Just write it in your native language (Welsh in this case) and have someone translate it. For most languages, not a big problem and the uni surely has the resources to do it. Here, the additional effort is the creation of the Welsh words that don't exist and maintaining the list for a Welsh to English translator.

> For most languages, not a big problem and the uni surely has the resources to do it. This is extremely uninformed. Not only will universities not translate your dissertation for you, they usually won’t even revise the English if you are a non-native speaker and wrote in that language. You have to pay for the costs of language revision out of your grant funding or even out of your own pocket. And this is not cheap.…

Honestly, unis are generally resourced enough that they could pull it off, were there the will to do it, and it certainly wouldn't be the least efficient use of their resources. But as with all things related to grad student exploitation, getting funds to do that through formal structures is like wringing blood from a stone.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#56

Post by comte7092 »

kome wrote: post #13
TeeMassive wrote: post #11

I get it. I'm a native French Canadian Speaker. My maternal tongue is important to me, to us. But when it comes to science, English is the Lingua Franca of STEM. The giant leaps that humanity has achieved over the past 500 years were made because people on the shoulder of giants; who spoke the lingua franca of the time. Back then Latin, now English.

let me disagree with that; many argues that modern science started with Galileo. The guy knew Latin. But he decided to write in Italian (and not Latin), because he wanted his results to be accessible to "everybody", and useful. I agree that English has reached the Latin status today, but - in the bigger picture - it's just spoken by a cosmopolitan elite, most of the people don't speak it or they don't speak it well.…

Latin was a dead language at the time while English is the most commonly spoken language on earth.

> it's just spoken by a cosmopolitan elite, most of the people don't speak it or they don't speak it well.

The same statement could be made about science. It’s a subject that’s mostly practiced by the cosmopolitan elite. In fact, even more so: you can’t be on the leading edge of science without being engaged in the global discourse around it.

Additionally, it’s actually quite common outside of English speaking countries for people to be multilingual. Using a common language for science really isn’t a big deal.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#57

Post by OfSanguineFire »

naniwaduni wrote: post #55
OfSanguineFire wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most languages, not a big problem and the uni surely has the resources to do it. This is extremely uninformed. Not only will universities not translate your dissertation for you, they usually won’t even revise the English if you are a non-native speaker and wrote in that language. You have to pay for the costs of language revision out of your grant funding or even out of your own pocket. And this is not cheap.…

Honestly, unis are generally resourced enough that they could pull it off, were there the will to do it, and it certainly wouldn't be the least efficient use of their resources. But as with all things related to grad student exploitation, getting funds to do that through formal structures is like wringing blood from a stone.

Even in countries where grad students are not exploited, where all PhD students are paid a local middle-class salary, universities still don’t generally provide such language services for free. If the PhD student is working under a funded project, then why should the university pay if the grant money can? Or if the student must pay out of his own pocket, then this one-time expense is seen as something that a student can manage himself instead of the university incurring further costs.

Universities are often resourced in that they will maintain a pool of knowledgeable native speakers of English or the local language who can provide language revision. It’s just that that service won’t be free.

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#58

Post by kamma4434 »

defrost wrote: post #39
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #35

Owain added new scientific terms to the Welsh dictionary. These include: “damcaniaeth dwysedd ffwythianolion” meaning “density functional theory” “brasamcan graddiant cyffredinol” which means a “general gradient approximation” “dull gwahaniaeth feidriadd” which translates as “finite difference method” Which sort of disproves the hypothesis that 'Welsh Is a Language for Science'.

Not in the slightest. When Isaac Asimov was doing his doctoral thesis in Chemistry the defacto language for reading and understanding any applied | industrial chemistry work was German. The three Welsh examples above appear to the untrained eye just as long, unweildly, and complex as German expressions in chemistry .. the real test is whether they become easier with familiarity and regular use.

But… why should anybody use them? How large can the chemical community in Wales ever be? And what is the advantage over English?

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#59

Post by OfSanguineFire »

comte7092 wrote: post #56
kome wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

let me disagree with that; many argues that modern science started with Galileo. The guy knew Latin. But he decided to write in Italian (and not Latin), because he wanted his results to be accessible to "everybody", and useful. I agree that English has reached the Latin status today, but - in the bigger picture - it's just spoken by a cosmopolitan elite, most of the people don't speak it or they don't speak it well.…

Latin was a dead language at the time while English is the most commonly spoken language on earth. > it's just spoken by a cosmopolitan elite, most of the people don't speak it or they don't speak it well. The same statement could be made about science. It’s a subject that’s mostly practiced by the cosmopolitan elite. In fact, even more so: you can’t be on the leading edge of science without being engaged in the glob…

It is actually quite common for people outside of English-speaking countries to complain about having to write in English in order to publish, it is indeed seen as a big deal. When an academic does not have flawless English, he/she is often forced to pay a considerable sum of money for language revision of their papers. Peer reviewers often say in their reports “This paper can be accepted provided that the following modifications are made: … the language is revised by a native English speaker.”

Re: Doctoral student completes a PhD in Chemistry entirely in Welsh

#60

Post by comte7092 »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #59
comte7092 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin was a dead language at the time while English is the most commonly spoken language on earth. > it's just spoken by a cosmopolitan elite, most of the people don't speak it or they don't speak it well. The same statement could be made about science. It’s a subject that’s mostly practiced by the cosmopolitan elite. In fact, even more so: you can’t be on the leading edge of science without being engaged in the glob…

It is actually quite common for people outside of English-speaking countries to complain about having to write in English in order to publish, it is indeed seen as a big deal. When an academic does not have flawless English, he/she is often forced to pay a considerable sum of money for language revision of their papers. Peer reviewers often say in their reports “This paper can be accepted provided that the following…

Well then what is the alternative?

I agree that is an unfair burden, but the goal of publishing is to have your paper read. Ultimately that’s going to mean translating it at some point into English or some other lingua franca, or have it translated into numerous other languages.

The complaint here isn’t about publishing in English, it’s about the burden of translation being on the author rather than the reader.

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